


if I could tell you I would let you know

by epistemology



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Protective Dick Grayson, could be gen too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26094007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistemology/pseuds/epistemology
Summary: Jason sits up slowly, letting the comforter fall away to reveal bandages criss crossing his whole torso. There’s no way he did them himself. Besides not remembering it, the way they were wrapped suggests someone else’s hands. The question now is who.The bedroom door opens at that moment, and Dick Grayson steps in.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 18
Kudos: 344
Collections: JayDick Summer Exchange 2020





	if I could tell you I would let you know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solomonara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solomonara/gifts).



> A special treat because I like h/c and also protective Dick. This was supposed to be slash, but then it became pre-slash oops, but somehow I doubt you'll mind:)
> 
> Title comes from the poem by Auden.

Jason rolls over, and pain shoots through his side, sharp enough to merit concern over where he might be sleeping. He cracks an eye open and sees a white pillow, familiar in that it always sits on his bed. He’s at his safehouse; that much is clear.

He’s half tempted to roll over and go back to sleep. His safehouse is, well, safe, but the problem lies in the fact that he can’t remember anything past yesterday afternoon. Or, he thinks it was yesterday. Maybe not.

A crack of thunder startles him just as his eyelids begin to droop, and the noise clears the haze beginning to cloud his mind, waking him up fully. No falling back asleep now. 

Jason sits up slowly, letting the comforter fall away to reveal bandages criss crossing his whole torso. There’s no way he did them himself. Besides not remembering it, the way they were wrapped suggests someone else’s hands. The question now is who.

The bedroom door opens at that moment, and Dick Grayson steps in.

A look of surprise flickers across his face. “You’re up,” he says.

Jason tries to say something to that, but opening his mouth only results in coughing, which Dick must have anticipated because he’s there in an instant, bringing the water bottle that was sitting on the bedside table to Jason’s lips. Jason snatches it from his hand with a wince and downs half of it.

“I have questions,” he rasps once he can talk at all, and then stands and makes his way to the bathroom before Dick can protest.

Everything is as he’d left it, except the first aid kit is missing, presumably left on a table somewhere from when Dick saved him from bleeding out, Jason guesses. He reaches for the bottle of pain meds before remembering he doesn’t know what he’s already taken and when. He reluctantly pulls his hand away and examines himself in the mirror instead.

He looks like shit. Dark circles cover the underneath of his eyes, giving him a weary, haggard look that isn’t helped by the bedhead. He runs his fingers through his curls, but it doesn’t help much. Then he pulls on a pair of sweats from the laundry hamper, because even though Dick already stripped him to his boxers, Jason doesn’t want to walk out there half naked in front of him to find a clean pair of pants.

He emerges from the bathroom minutes later to find his room empty, but a slight rustling tells him Dick is in the kitchen area. Jason walks slowly so as not to aggravate anything until he stops opposite the kitchen island where Dick is preparing something. He looks up to level Jason with a steely gaze.

“How do you feel?” he asks, then looks down again. It looks like Alfred’s blood loss smoothie in the works. Jason’s almost sure he had all the ingredients in his kitchen already.

Outside, the rain starts to pick up, and inside, Jason notices that Dick’s suit is wet.

“You could’ve changed. I have extra clothes.”

“How do you feel?” Dick repeats.

“Not great, but that’s to be expected. You give me pain meds already?”

Dick nods silently.

“Look, I don’t-” Jason starts, then stops. He clears his throat and begins again. “What happened? I can’t remember anything past what I assume was yesterday afternoon.”

Dick purses his lips. Displeased. Tightly containing some emotion he doesn’t want Jason to see. “You went up against Black Mask’s men last night. I don’t know if there were more of them than you expected or what, but. It was a coincidence that I found you.”

Shame, maybe. Disappointment? 

But then Jason is distracted from reading Dick because memories are flooding back. It was a trap. They were waiting for him. He vaguely remembers a one-sided fight, if it can even be called that. He doesn’t remember Dick.

“So, what? You showed up to fix my mistakes and me while you’re at it?” He doesn’t know why he’s pissed, but Dick was there, and Dick had helped him, and he can’t fucking remember.

“No, I just-”

Jason waits to see if Dick will keep talking, but he doesn’t, only pushes the finished smoothie towards him with instructions to drink it all before turning to the fridge. Jason sits at the bar, and Dick joins him a moment later, pizza box in hand.

“Do you know when you got this?” he asks.

“Uh, couple of days ago, I think. Should be fine, but I’ve got better stuff for breakfast in there.”

“This is fine,” Dick says and sits next to him, and then they eat in silence.

Jason tries not to let his mind wander, but the gaps in his memory are still too prevalent, and it leaves him uncomfortable. He doesn’t like Dick knowing things and not sharing. And he gets the feeling Dick isn’t sharing something.

Speaking of Dick, there’s still something up with him, a frustration written on his face that has nothing to do with the wet suit he refuses to change out of. Jason tries to examine him subtly, but everytime he glances over, Dick is already looking at him.

“Can you stop that?” he finally snaps, irritated.

Dick frowns. “Stop what?”

“Staring. You keep looking at me like you’re afraid I’m gonna up and attack you!”

“Jay, that’s not what I’m-”

“Oh yeah?” Jason cuts in before he can finish. “Because you’re sure as hell angry at something.”

“I’m not angry,” Dick says staunchly. He abandons his cold pizza to its box.

“Yes, you are!”

“I’m not,” he repeats, but Jason can see the glint in his eye.

“You are.”

“Fine!” He throws up his hands in an exaggerated gesture. “I’m angry! Congratulations!”

It suddenly doesn’t seem like a win.

“I’m angry,” Dick says, “because you almost died, Jason. Again. And you should’ve had backup for that. You could’ve asked me, and I would’ve- I didn’t know what was going on, and then I found you like that, and. It was a surprise, okay? And I’m not angry at you, I’m just-”

He breaks off, and as much as Jason prefers to have Dick talking rather than sulking, he’s not given him that much information. Jason just wants to _know._

“What happened?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Dick admits. “I got there too late, and you were down, and I don’t even know how I managed to take them all out, but all I could think about was getting you out of there. I didn’t even know if you were alive at first.” He stops, breathes, continues. “I brought you here because it was close by and I thought you’d appreciate waking up somewhere familiar.”

Jason did appreciate it. A lot, in fact. Who knows how he might have reacted if he woke up in an unfamiliar bed.

He reaches out a hand, unsure of whether to touch or not, and then decides not to. “Dick-”

“I can’t lose you again, Jason. I know that’s not fair of me to say because we weren’t even close before, and I don’t know how much closer we are now, but I can’t lose you. I don’t want you to get hurt all alone because you don’t feel like you can ask us for help.”

A silence settles over the two of them, and everything fades into the background noise of the rain outside. Jason wonders how long it’s been raining, if Dick carried him all the way back in this weather.

Eventually, he asks again. “What happened, Dickie? What aren’t you telling me?”

There’s definitely shame this time, unfiltered and expressed in every inch of Dick’s body, from his eyes that won’t meet Jason’s to his feet tapping like a child’s who can’t sit still.

“I snapped, Jay,” he says quietly enough to make Jason strain his ears. “They had you on the ground, and they were going to kill you, and I snapped.”

He’s careful when he reaches out to touch Dick, to lay a comforting hand on his arm. “What did you mean when you said you took them out?”

Contrary to Dick’s belief, Jason knows about the Joker. He’s known for a while; a Bat walking out covered in someone’s blood is a little hard to hide, and Jason didn’t need to do much digging to find the source. He’s never known how to feel about it, and he’s always had too many complicated feelings about the Joker anyways. About Dick.

Jason knows Dick is capable of killing. Hell, all of them probably are, even if most of them won’t admit it to themselves. That’s what sets Jason apart in the most condemning way. But he can’t pretend he doesn’t know that the Golden Boy himself has killed, whether it was truly for Jason or not. 

Still, the answer is hardly surprising.

“I mean I took them out for the police. But I was… unnecessarily violent, you could say.”

Jason just barely keeps from snorting.

“But there was a moment,” Dick continues, “where I didn’t want to stop. And not because they deserved to die, or whatever you always say, but because they dared to hurt _you._ ”

There are so many ways Jason can take that, none of which seem feasible in his own mind, but he can’t even hazard a guess at what Dick is thinking right now. Thoughts flick through his mind faster than he’s able to catalogue them, and if Dick is waiting for a coherent answer to that declaration, he won’t be getting one anytime soon.

Jason clears his throat, if only to break the awkward tension. The rain is slowing down, a steady trickle that drips on the roof and the windows. “If you wanna change out of that wet suit, I’ve got some extra clothes that’ll probably be more comfortable.”

Dick reads into it, because of course he does, and Jason wasn’t exactly subtle. And then he smiles.

There will be more time to talk, more time to figure out what the hell Dick meant when he poured out his heart in Jason’s kitchen in front of a slice of cold pizza. But for now, Jason will give Dick something he’s rarely given to anyone else.

An invitation.

  
  



End file.
